The movers were great, but it was easy to notice when their day was coming to an end. All the cautions taken earlier in the day started to make way for the unspoken 'Just get it in the truck. I want to go home.'.

So I had to abandon my hands off policy. They were looking for something flat to stick on top of the bicycles, which were on top of the boxes. About six inches of space at the top of the container. One guy grabbed a painting and wrapped some paper around it to fill the void. I immediately pictured opening the container at the other end and finding a handlebar stuck through the thing.

Perdoneme? Esta pintura es quince mil dolares! Una caja, por favor...

('Scuse me, but that's a fifteen thousand dollar painting - please put it in a box.). My Spanish isn't perfect, but I know enough to get by. All work came to a halt momentarily while they digested the implications. A couple even took a critical artistic look at the painting in question, rather than just as an object to pack. You mean some of this stuff isn't just household junk? Si, es muy bonita. Yes, It is very beautiful. From then on, they began to treat everything with just a bit more respect.

This belongs to MichaelAnn. Reproduced here because I love it. I would normally just import the feed except this one is setup with teaser (short) feeds where all the articles are chopped off in mid [...]